Located between a quiet residential neighborhood on one side and a development of new affordable homes on the other, the warehouse at 182 Winchester’s recent history is inscribed on its façade. The huge rectangles in the concrete façade that once housed leaded casement windows are now either boarded up with plywood or filled in with concrete blocks. The difference in material suggests that the process of removing the factory’s windows was completed in stages. Interestingly, the fenestration in the now-solid areas of the façade gives a more fine-tuned record of the factory’s progressive conversion from its original form to the current state. The different shapes, sizes, and locations of the windows scattered on the exterior of the building trace a time-line for the building’s renovation, revealing the different instances when the owners saw fit to block up a large section of the façade (see fig 1). Now housing an auto-repair shop, the building’s plain façade belies this site’s important role in New Haven’s industrial base.



This site is very important to New Haven’s industrial history precisely because of its location. Originally bounded by railroad tracks on the west, the Winchester Arms factory on the north, Winchester Avenue on the East, and private homes on the south, the site embodies the reasons industrial production came to the city and flourished in the second half of the 19th century: easy access to railroads, workers, and jobs. Records at the Yale University Manuscripts and Archives contain legal documents pertaining to the site’s history from 1874. These records date from just 27 years after the Farmington Canal, the western border of the site, was converted from a canal to a railway for the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad Company. This rail route brought industrial materials both to this site and to the Winchester Arms factory, which allowed this area to develop many industrial factories and warehouses. Because of the railroad access, the first warehouse was constructed on the site between 1874 and 1879 for a meat-packing firm, the Judson Packing Company, which was a division of the nationalized United States Casualty Co (see figure 2).



As seen in figure 2, the areas surrounding the site were still mainly residential around the turn of the 20th century. The first twenty years of the 20th century would see enormous industrial growth and increased residential concentration in New Haven; much of this growth was centered on the Winchester Arms factory, just north of this site, making it an important beneficiary of the industrial and residential growth in the neighborhood. In 1906, Frank P Pfleghar bought the site at 182 Winchester and constructed a warehouse for his specialty hardware manufacturing business. By 1911, the factory was surrounded by other industrial warehouses, including CB Curtis, Celuloid Starch Co., and Hygienic Ice Co. (see figure 4). In order for the factories to function, the companies needed workers; thus the huge difference between the 1888 and 1911 Sanborn insurance maps is not only the increased concentration of industrial buildings, but also the great proliferation of residential units (compare figures 3 and 4). In the early 20th century, in addition to the people who could walk to work, the factories around 182 Winchester enticed workers from all parts of the city who could access the factories on the streetcars that ran on tracks going up Winchester Ave (see figure 4). The site was not only a local center of industry but one that attracted people from all over the city.



Just as the site’s history parallels New Haven’s industrial ascendance, so too does it correspond to New Haven’s decline in industrial productivity. After the advent of electric power, factories no longer had to be concentrated in the cities where it was cheapest to transport coal. Thus starting in the 1920s, New Haven’s industries began to leave for cheaper land outside the city. The Great Depression compounded this problem for New Haven’s industrial base, causing the foreclosure of numerous mortgages, including that of 182 Winchester, and forced the consolidation of the companies that remained afloat. The building constructed by Pfleghar for his hardware company changed hands numerous times in the 1920s and 30s before being bought by McKesson & Robbins Co, a drug and liquor wholesaler. It is unclear whether or not the proprietors of McKesson & Robbins Co. tore down the Pfleghar building (as the Connecticut Historical Report purports) or modified it, because elements of the building on the site seen in the 1911 and the 1940s Sanborn maps seem very similar (see figures 4 and 5). The date of construction of the McKesson & Robbins building is an important discussion because the economic conditions of New Haven were very different in 1911 than in 1935; if constructed in 1911, the building would reflect the burgeoning industrial base in New Haven while if it were constructed in 1935, it would represent the company’s misplaced desire to create a new building in the midst of an economic crisis rather than modify an existing structure to the company’s needs.



By 1941, much of New Haven’s industrial base was already consolidated and the demand for subsidized housing was increasing as people lost their jobs as a result of firms leaving the city. Starting in the 1950s and continuing through the 1970s, New Haven’s city leadership promoted a process of urban renewal that included the construction of the Elm Haven Extension apartments across Canal Street (formerly the railroad tracks) from 182 Winchester. This development wiped out a huge swath of land formerly dedicated to singly- and two-family homes, replacing it with an expansive public housing block, and forever changing the composition of the neighborhood.



Even today, the site parallels the status of New Haven’s economic situation. The current building at 182 Winchester has been reconfigured to house an auto-repair shop. The Winchester factory is almost completely closed down, but the Elm Haven apartments have been replaced with new, mixed-income houses. The New Haven of today is a city urban infill (through projects like Elm Haven or through reusing existing structures for new purposes) and of juxtaposing the derelict with the chic (such as the juxtaposition of Science Park at Yale with the abandoned Winchester factory). Because of its intimate connection with the New Haven infrastructure, the building at 182 Winchester is and always has been highly representative of the economic and social condition of New Haven.